


(I Wake Up) It's a Bad Dream

by Wonderlandleighleigh



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, Just say Nope to Hydra!Cap
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-06-01
Updated: 2016-06-01
Packaged: 2018-07-11 14:33:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 960
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7056445
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wonderlandleighleigh/pseuds/Wonderlandleighleigh
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Right. So. Not Hydra.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Feel Too Tired to be Fighting (Guess I'm Not the Fighting Kind)

The dream sends him bolt upright in bed, crying out, breathing hard. He feels out of control. He feels like he needs to run to cry to hit something do anything, and he can’t- 

The very idea.

The very thought of- 

“Steve?” 

He looks up and wipes a his face. “I’m fine. I’m-” 

Sam steps in then, looking worried. “Hey.” 

“Yeah.” 

“Bad dream?” 

“Yeah.” 

“Bucky again?” 

“Nah. Feels worse, a little.” 

“What’s goin on, we havin’ a party?” Tony asks from behind Sam. “I heard a yell, Does Rogers have a girl in there?” 

“Just a bad dream, Tony, go back to bed,” Steve says thickly, before getting up and grabbing a t-shirt. “Seriously, I’m fine.” 

“Why is everybody at Steve’s door?” Natasha asks. 

“He had a bad dream,” Sam says. 

She groans. “Okay you, two. Back to bed.” She shoves past them and shuts the door before turning to him. “Hard time adjusting to the compound?” 

“I’m fine, Nat,” he says softly, as he does up his running shoes. “Just gonna go for a jog.” 

“At nearly four in the morning.” 

“Not getting anymore sleep.” 

“Steve.” 

“Just a bad dream, Nat.” 

“You screamed.” 

“I yelled.” 

“It was loud.” 

“Nat-” 

“Just spit it out, Rogers. We all have bad dreams, what’s yours?” 

He hesitates. “I-…I dreamed…I dreamed that I was Hydra. That I’ve always been Hydra. That my mother went to meetings when I was a kid…that…that everything I’ve been has been for them. All the people I lost to them, I-as a Hydra agent they were acceptable…acceptable losses.” He laughs bitterly. “It was like watchin’ a horror movie.” 

She stays quiet. “I did some research into my Ma, y’know,” Steve says quietly. “When I got out, I just…missed her so much, which is nuts. She’d been gone a while by the time I… So I found a few records of her workin’ in a soup kitchen…records from the TB ward she worked in…not much else.” 

“Steve.” 

“I gotta go for that run.” 

“Okay.” 

He nods and moves past her, out the door. 

“Rogers.” 

He turns to her. “Later.” 

She nods and lets him go.


	2. Seeking Out the Memories I Hold Dear

He stops sleeping, and everyone notices.

“It was just a dream, Cap,” Tony reminds him. “You’re not Hydra. Your mother wasn’t Hydra. You know that. Shake it off.”

“Maybe you need a vacation,” Sam comments. “After everything that happened after the Accords, and then comin’ back to the Avengers…you’ve been non-stop. And you still can’t answer my question: What makes you happy?”

“Just swallow your feelings, that’s what I do,” Nat jokes, as she hands him a smoothie. “You’ll be fine.”

He’s not.

He worries, and he thinks and he just can’t stop. He digs up everything he can find about Sarah Rogers. About Joseph Rogers. About his whole family, and his entire room is covered in folders and documents and immigration papers; in old photos and letters found who-knows-where.

There’s no trace of Hydra in any of it. His mother, he always knew, was a nurse. His father, before the war, was a longshoreman, loading and unloading ships at the docks. He traces his grandparents in Ireland. Poor farmers. His mother had sisters, who had children who now have children who had children.

It’s dizzying.

But there’s no trace of Hydra.

He likes to think of his father as a strong man. Ma always said he was a quiet man of good humor. He drank a little too much sometimes, but she always said that he was good to her; that he was proud that they were going to have Steve.

That he knew he was dying. That he knew he would never meet his son.

There’s a trunk.

It’s old, and it’s falling apart, and it’s been collecting dust at Sharon’s parents’ house for years.

She brings it to the compound and she lugs it inside and settles it on the floor of the living room.

“Thanks,” Steve mutters. “How did Peggy get a hold of this thing?”

Sharon sighs and flops down on a couch. “You didn’t have a next-of-kin. The army commandeered it, and then the SSR. When the SSR morphed into SHIELD, and Aunt Peggy became director, she smuggled it out.”

Steve nods and circles it slowly, not looking at Sharon. “Help yourself to anything in the kitchen.”

He doesn’t open it while she’s there. They spend some time together. They watch a movie. Sharon is nice, and a good friend, but he sees the way she looks at Sam sometimes, and it’s not the way she looks at him, and that’s okay.

That’s okay. Maybe he’s just too old for that kind of thing.

He circles the trunk again.

It’s late, and everyone has gone to bed for the most part, and he hasn’t seen the contents of this trunk since before the war; before the serum.

He sits down finally, and opens it up, and wrinkles his nose at the musty smell. He half expects everything to be disintegrated and mildewed and beyond recognition.

Everything looks older, but he knows what all of it is.

A small collection of books. His mother’s engagement ring in a small green jewelry box. His father’s compass with the warn photo of his mother inside. Three of his old sketchbooks. A baseball covered in signatures. A small wooden music box.

He opens the music box and it plays. It’s out of tune, but it still works, and Steve grins sadly.

There’s no Hydra here.

Underneath the books, he unearths a very old teddy bear, and can’t help grinning, holding it out in front of him.

It’s seen better days, and it’s not exactly cute, but it makes him feel…

There’s no Hydra here.

**Author's Note:**

> Story and Chapter titles taken from various Keane songs.


End file.
